Student locator tags: Evil or helpful?

This from the Providence Journal:

PROVIDENCE — With an increased emphasis on school safety across Rhode Island, identification cards, metal detectors and campus police officers have become familiar sights. But do tracking devices that follow students’ every movement go too far?

When the Middletown School Department earlier this year piloted a program equipping elementary students’ backpacks with radio frequency locator tags, school officials promised improved safety for children in transit to and from school on buses.

“That’s Big Brother at its scariest,” said Steven Brown, president of the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, which strongly opposed the plan.

Brown wasn’t alone. The story made national news and House and Senate lawmakers, worried about privacy violations, passed legislation prohibiting the use of such tags to track students...